Indian nation launches campaign for return of Jim Thorpe's body to Oklahoma

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The body of Jim Thorpe, who died in Lomita, California, on March 28, 1953, at the age of 64, arrives in Shawnee, Oklahoma, on April 9, 1953, for final rites in his hometown. The Sac and Fox Indian Nation is launching a campaign to have Thorpe's body returned to them in Oklahoma.

The body of Jim Thorpe, who died in Lomita, California, on March 28, 1953, at the age of 64, arrives in Shawnee, Oklahoma, on April 9, 1953, for final rites in his hometown. The Sac and Fox Indian Nation is launching a campaign to have Thorpe's body returned to them in Oklahoma. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Ken MillerOf The Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY — The Sac and Fox Nation on Wednesday launched a campaign seeking to move the remains of renowned athlete Jim Thorpe from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma.

The announcement came a day after Thorpe's surviving sons, Bill and Richard Thorpe, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow them to pursue reburial of the famed athlete on American Indian land in Oklahoma. The sons did not attend Wednesday's announcement.

"This is his family's wish. This is his own personal wish," Sac and Fox Nation Principal Chief George Thurman said in announcing the "Bring Jim Thorpe Home" campaign. "To come home to Oklahoma, Sac and Fox country to be buried."

Thorpe, a football, baseball and track star who won the decathlon and pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics, died without a will in 1953 at age 64.

He was laid to rest in Pennsylvania after Oklahoma's governor balked at the cost of a planned monument to the athlete. His third wife, Patricia, had Thorpe's body seized by police during his Native American funeral service and sent it to northeastern Pennsylvania. She struck a deal with two merging towns — Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk — to build a memorial and name the new town after him.

Olympian Jim Thorpe was buried in the town that bears his name in Pennsylvania. Thorpe was a football, baseball and track star who won the decathlon and pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics. His surviving sons are currently fighting a court battle to remove his body and rebury it in Oklahoma.

(Morning Call staff, Associated Press)

The borough of Jim Thorpe has found support from Thorpe's grandsons, who say it has done right by him. The town's attorney said Tuesday that many of the claims in the sons' Supreme Court petition are "folklore rather than facts," with well-established estate law giving Thorpe's wife the right to decide where he should be buried.

In 2013, a federal judge gave Thorpe's sons a victory, ruling the town amounted to a museum under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The law requires museums — defined as any institution or state or local government agency that receives federal funds — and federal agencies possessing American Indian remains to return them upon request of the deceased's family or tribe.